It’s Getting Hot In Here

I can’t say its the first time I’ve thought about this, some thousands of miles away from home, a few years after the beginnings of Climate Campaign, Energy Action, and the US youth climate network, working with the Indian Youth Climate Network and exchanging ideas with people doing similar and so inspiring projects to empower and engage youth absolutely all over the world. The platform that the internet, in conjunction with a beautiful united goal and vision like 350, provides for us to exchange ideas is unparalleled in history.

Last week, at an unbelievably inspiring presentation by Kaiulani Lee of A Sense of Wonder (I’ll post about it later), about the life and story of Rachel Carson, who transformed the US Environmental Movement, causing Congress to rethink pesticides and environmental protection, arguably inspiring the Environmental Protection Agency itself, while fighting against corporate threats and doubting scientists, while also fighting her own battles with cancer. it was so inspiring to hear again, to see acted so beautifully by Kaiulani, and she mentioned just how powerful it was to share the ideas in India right now - for her to be there. Rachel Carson would have never dreamed of being here, Kaiulani said, despite the fact that so many people were fighting the same battles over here. Jawarharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, died a month after Rachel Carson in 1964. We’re approaching the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s journey to India where he travelled with Mahatma Gandhi, beginning his struggle for nonviolent action in the US. It was hard to share so many ideas back then, letters exchanged across the ocean, then months spent together.

Kaiulani said that she had always thought of globalization as this awful mechanism for spreading consumerism globally. But the beauty of the globalization of ideas allows me to be posting from here in India, phone banking for Obama, being a part of this beginning of a global youth movement to fight for the future that our generation deserves. Rachel Carson didn’t know about other fights in other lands, couldn’t gain that strength. But today, as climate change binds us all together for one common future, I am so grateful for the fact that we - global youth - can create a future together, the future we need, the future we want, the future that WE can make possible. Thank you for sharing these stories here, and thank you to all of you for your tireless work and constant inspiration. Thank you for all that you do!